Tag Archives: Review

Danna ga Nani wo Itteiru ka Wakaranai Ken is back with its second season and continues to do what it does perfectly well: keenly portraying a relationship that balances the candor of newly-wed life and the oddness, at most times offputtingly so, of otaku subculture.

Episode 19 of GRANDE ROAD has us seeing the return of the Sakamichi complex, in other words that happy-go-lucky stickler who just won’t let you escape his clutches, even if he has to manually force-break his off-course bike with his own foot and or scream his signature hime song with his undoubtedly already arid lungs convulsing for oxygen (the latter of which he probably enjoys nonetheless).

Purely based off its title, I was expecting Shinmai Maou no Testament to be in the same vein as the rest of this season’s action-fantasy series (a presumption further enhanced by the episode’s immediate title card of “The Day I Got a Little Sister”); but wildly enough, Shinmai Maou went the full harem route for thirteen whole minutes into the episode, a path that I probably would have preferred for the aforementioned shows as well to be honest.

In a particularly lukewarm season of anime, the action-fantasy series don’t come to impress. After a rather unsuccessfully majestic opening scene of MMORPG-esque party-quest nature, Seiken Tsukai no World Break eases into the commonplace high school setting to tell an overly-comfortable tale of teen angst and magical lore.

Kantai Collection -KanColle- is the second of four shows apart of studio Diomedéa’s relatively big presence in this not so big season of anime. Some may or may not know that it is based upon an online card game that is currently experiencing a tremendously successful reception in Japan, a popularity that more than strongly derives from the series’s idol-licious cast of characters.

In the condensed form of something such as a one-minute and fifteen-second opening sequence, a series like Absolute Duo may seem like it has a perfectly decent value of entertainment to offer―what with the fast-paced montage of busty, blade-wielding beauties, intense magical warfare, glorious sunrise/sunset backdrops, bromantic camaraderie, and a tone of fantastical tragedy―but getting into the bulk of the actual content reveals a pretty slow burn of a show.

Akame ga Kill! certainly has the welcome of a conventional shounen series, but it would be wrong to overlook this show as another run-of-the-mill story about big swords, big boobs, and big plot twists, despite the fact that all three of these elements do make up a good presence in this premiere.

While TMS Entertainment may have done a more faithful visual adaptation than A-1 Pictures in their respective productions of Magic Kaito, this premiere episode has proved that there is nothing wrong with instilling a more modern touch into the fray; as far as I’m concerned, I’m loving it ever the more.

With some cute-ass original artwork, a cast of more than one-hundred in-game girls to swoon over, and a five-million (plus) user fan-base, it’s really no surprise that Girlfriend (Kari) green-lit an anime adaptation to cater its fans even more, but it’ll take much, much more than what’s shown in the show’s premiere to qualify this adaptation as anything beyond just that: pure promotion and pandering.

That level of lasciviousness wasn’t quite what I was expecting Garo: Honoo no Kokuin to bring to the table, but the series premiere’s mixture of peculiar artistry and mature subject matters is definitely not something I’m inclined to turn away.

Sunrise sure knows how to put variation in its mecha series, but I guess if I were to expect any mecha series with just as much fantastical dragon-blood splattering on screen as mechanical explosions, it would be one created by the same production studio responsible for the spasmodic sensation that was Code Geass.

Juding solely from the attractive promotional art, I was sincerely hoping Madan no Ou to Vanadis to be a potential comeback for the fantasy genre in anime; but while the visual appeal teased through promotion definitely retains enough of its brilliance in actual episode content, whether the dissatisfaction is just as quiet on the western front of scriptural story-telling or not is still contentious.

Silly male protagonist, the main character of a visual novel story can never have a “normal high school life”. The premiere of Grisaia no Kajitsu doesn’t escape the generic feeling of adult visual novel premises, but in a way, it does bring to the table the best of those elements you already expected it to have.

If there’s one thing P.A. Works knows how to do flawlessly, even more so than visual quality, it’s swiftly establishing a heart-warming atmosphere through both sound and art. Shirobako’s premise of “an anime about making anime” may seem tripe and akin to other such series that overdo the parodical caricature of it all, but it’s meaningful to not forget the P.A. pedigree that this project derives from.

I more than welcome the long-awaited Kyoto Animation production that deviates away from the studio’s usual moe-dominating character designs and art style, but I guess it has to come as a trade-off for Amagi Brilliant Park.

Slow and steady wins the race, but will it win the race to collect all of King Arthur Gaz’s body parts? Now that’s the question to be asked, and honestly, if it did, that would be quite the shocking じじつ.

Parasyte wastes absolutely no time conveying the narrative subject matter at (horrifically mutated) hand, as a pre-opening sequence spanning less than twenty-five seconds depicts a helpless housewife having her noggin chomped off by the mutated head of her parasite-infected husband. If that isn’t enough of a fair warning for those faint of heart, I don’t know what is.

I’ll admit that I came into this season with moderately high, perhaps unfair, expectations for Nanatsu no Taizai. With the large-scale promotion and hype surrounding the anime series prior to its premiere, it wasn’t hard for me to foresee it as the first good medieval-fantasy series in a long, long while.

Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in, from the magical world of wonderful anime productions. Ufotable’s TV anime adaptation of Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works] makes its gallant premiere oh-so-similarly to the studio’s previous adaptation of Fate/zero in form, but the results couldn’t have been any more different.

I’ve been eagerly waiting to see whether World Trigger would to end up on the Kyousougiga end of the modern Toei Animation’s spectrum or the One Piece (what the anime series is today at least) and Toriko end of the spectrum. Unfortunately, it looks like I’m going to have to write it off as one amongst the latter.

Log Horizon returns in the hands of a new production studio, but nonetheless remains true to form. A montage of party-quest battles, a display of various character classes’ skills, and dialogue from the players who seem bent on having the time of their lives despite being trapped in a game for quite possibly the rest of their virtual-human lives remind me instantaneously why I adore this show and its take of this niche sub-genre.

Come one, come all to the bookstore located in the electric town of Akihabara, Umanohone, where you might just find yourself, whether it’s through the large collection of manga series with beautifully captivating stories or through the group of employees themselves, each of whom represent a particular essence of the comic readership.

I’ve been following the Hamatora project since the first season’s airing from January to March, and boy, has it been quite the emotional thrill ride. Back then, I definitely viewed the series through the lens of a pretty well-established crime-solving and mystery series, but this second cour has definitely broadened the series’s genre palette some more.

A melodramatic exposition to start off the premiere of Terra Formars, but by the end of the episode, that momentum is used for quite the unexpected, yes, you heard her right, specialized and well-trained reservists blasting off into space to wage humanity’s war on… cockroaches…?!

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